Exclusive: Fallen Leaves producers Bufo get serious about genre, prepare vampire comedy

Exclusive: Present in competition in Cannes with Aki Kaurismäki’s film, Helsinki-based Bufo is beefing up its slate with high concept genre content, next to its core arthouse auteur-driven films.

“We started Bufo in 2007 with the idea to make genre content, but somehow, we got attracted to arthouse movies or they got attracted to us, and for the last decade we’ve focused entirely on arthouse. Now is the time to go back to our roots, deliver entertaining genre content with a clear target audience, next to the more upmarket arthouse movies”, said Misha Jaari, producer and co-founder with Mark Lwoff of Bufo and their distribution outfit B-Plan.

Jaari said Nordisk Film & TV Fond’s former development scheme 'Nordic Genre Boost' where Bufo brought Saara Saarela’s dystopian drama Memory of Water, back in 2016, was instrumental in planting the seeds of genre into their arthouse slate. The film was based on a script by rising talent Ilja Rautsi (Hatching), who has now become a regular Bufo collaborator.

“Misha and Mark find splatter interesting and cool. They want to create something unique and entertaining and we basically share the same vision,” Rautsi told us.

After his multi-awarded horror comedy shorts Helsinki Mansplaining Massacre (2018) and Night of the Living Dicks (2021), which he wrote and directed for Bufo, the partners are now preparing his feature-length debut as writer/director - Red Snow.

Boiling down the story of his high concept Christmas horror comedy, Rautsi says: “It's an outrageous Christmas horror comedy about a sulky goth teen girl, who fantasises about finding a sparkling Twilight vampire prince to get rid of her lame family, only to find more than she bargained for in a balding fat vampire, forever stuck in middle age, who moonlights as a Santa Claus to eat whole families.”

Rautsi also suggests the following tagline: “On Christmas there is nothing worse than loneliness, except your own family!”, he jokes.

“It’s a vampire coming-of age, both serious and hilarious at the same time, with a strong auteur touch” says Jaari who underscores the film’s overarching theme of a young woman fighting for independence. The project which has received development support from the Finnish Film Foundation is due to start shooting later in 2024.

For now, Bufo founders are fully focused on Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, their third collaboration with the Finnish legendary filmmaker after Le Havre (2011 Cannes competition entry), and the Berlinale Silver Bear winning film The Other Side of Hope. Both films were Bufo co-productions.

Next to Fallen Leaves, Bufo is in the middle of production of another major feature from a Finnish legend: Orenda by Pirjo Honkasalo.

Currently filming in Estonia, the drama is the renowned cinematographer and filmmaker Honkasalo’s first fiction film in a decade after Concrete Night, also produced by Bufo. In the starring roles are Fallen Leaves’ Alma Pöysti, as well as Pirjo Saisio - writer of the script - and Hannu-Pekka Björkman. “Basically, it’s a story about mercy and forgiveness, said Jaari, adding that the material so far “is just mind-boggling and gorgeous!”.

The film is produced with Sweden’s Plattform (Ruben Östlund’s production outfit) and Estonia’s Allfilm. Delivery is slated for 2025.

Jaari says working both with Kaurismäki and Honkasalo are “immense pleasures and honours”. “With such established names - as was the case with Jörn Donner before - you always learn something new, something you value even more with time,” notes the producer.

Next to the seasoned directors, Bufo continues to support new filmmaking voices, such as Khadar Ayderus Ahmed whose debut The Gravediggers Wife had a successful world premiere at Cannes’ Critics Week 2021

The latest new Finnish auteur on Bufo’s roster is Markus Lehmusruusu, whose absurd comedy drama The Squirrel is set to start filming mid-2024.

Most Bufo films are financing via public funding and co-productions - with regular partners including Norway’s Mer Film (Let the River Flow, The Innocents were minority co-produced by Bufo) Sweden’s Plattform and Atmo (Boy from Heaven).

Co-productions are ways for Bufo as well to fill their distribution arm with quality features. Among B-Plan’s biggest recent hits was the Estonian/Finnish film Goodbye Soviet Union.

“We are a boutique distribution operator, releasing between 3 - 10 films a year. There is more competition for MGs, so-co-producing helps us secure great movies. And access to B-Plan, [headed by Helena Mielonen] helps us immensely to think in terms of target audience from a very early stage,” underlines Jaari.

TV drama
To adapt to the changing financing and distribution landscape, Bufo is also ramping up its TV production slate.

After the comedy Northern Mishaps (2015) Elisa Viihde’s Next of Kin, the production outfit has several TV projects in development, including the limited series The Town of Tails.

The light-hearted ghost story penned by Minna Panjanen is set in a small town, where a literary professor is in need of a Christmas miracle, when he gets tangled in a murder investigation with a woman whom no one else can see.

Summarising his mid-term strategy, Jaari said he would like to produce every two years, three major productions - either two features and a series, or vice versa, with a combination of traditional financing and streaming coin.

“Yes in the future, I would like to involve major streamers. Out of 8 projects produced over 5 years, I would like to see 20% of them financed with streamers. That would be ideal,” he says.

Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves will be release by Germany’s Pandora Film Verleih September 14 and by B-Plan in Finland September 15. The Norwegian premiere will be handled by Arthaus and the Swedish premiere by Folkets Bio. The Match Factory handles global sales.